Normandy, France
June, 1996

Along the beach below Ponte de Hoc
wind shapes the sand with its resolute hand,
waves thrash erratically like white-knuckled fists,
and behind the shore tall rocks circle like shoulders.
Up on the cliff
the shattered skeleton of a blockhouse sprawls in silent censure.
This is the beach that cost more than two thousand lives to free.
All day clouds collect, hide the sky, begin to breathe their rain.
The cool fingers of water
run down my face, and I shudder
as I had shuddered when I heard the names
Biggy Brinson, Harry Jackson, Cliff Sawyer
rushing through the halls of my school in whispers
as if that would make it not true.
I did not know the faces, just the names
separated from me by five years that brought them
to their time here in 1944.
As I walked to school, grenade were thrown on faces.
Blood of those who did not reach the cliffs
pooled with the surf onto the shore then slid back into the sea
while I read newspapers, listened to the radio, studied maps,
learned to play the clarinet, memorized the Gettysburg Address.
The rain stops, giving promise of sun.
Other sands bleed now.
Other names on other lips
guide steps to different places
while I take this necessary walk
in the endless wind.

Night Walk

Momma holds my hand real tight,
leading, almost pulling me
away from 310 North Road--
trudging up one street,
down another,
then another,
and another
until she spots Daddy's truck.
Momma stops, stands still as ice,
her eyes slowly
scanning back and forth
from Daddy's truck to the white wooden house
with the upstairs windows
gleaming like pale yellow eyes
dimmed by the closed lids of the shades.
I glance up at Momma
staring at the windows.
I look around--
a woman's shadow glides across the shade
her arms out-stretched, reaching--
Suddenly
Momma grabs my hand,
turns, almost runs,
pulling me,
my heart pounding
faster and faster
shortening my breath more and more,
and I know something
I do not know how to say.

My Mother's Father

The only picture I hold of my mother's father
is of him sitting on the back porch peeling an apple,
the single curl of skin stretching its green C
almost to the floor of his oldest child's house
which was once where he and the grandmother I never knew
lived with their seven children, uncooped chickens, and dog.
My mother's father never spoke to me
during that stay when I started first grade,
and there were whispers about
why my Momma and I were there
seven hundred miles from Norfolk, Virginia.
My mother's father wore black pants with yellow suspenders
that looped down on each side of the wooden rocking chair
like huge elephant ears of air.
Even though it was Missippi warm in October,
he wore long-sleeve underwear without a shirt.
He carefully sliced each sliver of apple, tossed it into his mouth,
chewed it between his two front teeth, beaver-like;
his gray mustache tapping the bottom of his nose.
I was afraid of him for no reason.
Aunt Theresa, his oldest child, told me
he loved apples, grapes, bourbon, and shrimp gumbo,
that he was a conductor on the Norfolk and Southern Railroad
for forty two years,
and the family used to ride free
once a year from Ocean Springs to New Orleans,
and all week he lived in a caboose
at the end of a moving train.
He came home each Friday evening
walking the few blocks from the station
with eight pieces of penny candy and a pint of bourbon;
one piece of candy for each child, one for the dog,
and the bourbon for him.
When my daddy came to town,
voices rumbled in the dark,
and we went back north.
I found out I could read better than
the other kids in my class,
and I wished I could tell
my mother's father
even though I knew
he would not answer.

Rite of Passage

If you had asked me who I am a week ago,
I would have fumed that I am a woman
who loathes bloody corridors both inside and out.
I would have heaved at the length and breadth
of genocide on a planet
so small as this, for blood is one color.
I would have raged over the spillage of
the sour parts of man into rivers and oceans
lidded with oil. I would have told you in expletives
about the oblique fantasies of politicians' words.
I still ache at the dark and soiled swamps
of many souls, but I am different now.
My heart gathered into itself when I wasn't looking
and caught my breath to give to the wind.
I touched the taproot of knowledge
soaked from earth itself. Now I see
a sky that never lessens. I hold your hand,.
listen more attentively to your lips and eyes.
I still worry about neighborhoods
with chipped-paint houses beside crumbled sidewalks.
I still fret about the fatherless children
who cluster and roam in alleys of pain.
Now I think the riddle of what we are
without any whys with a depth
I did not know the ocean held.
And I am more. I tell you over and over
I am now a woman who is the swirl
of dandelion down in the the arms of April,
the sport of a sandpiper edging the skin of the sea,
the dance of snow on the breath of winter.
I am now a woman who drinks light like water,
who still hurts at the horrors, but in echoes,
because I walk without wires and tubes,
my hearts mends with medicine, and
I unlock each morning with rich eyes.